Billy Bragg delivered the second annual John Peel Lecture earlier today (November 12) at the Radio Festival 2012 at The Lowry in Salford.
Bragg's speech saw him rallying against the decline of state educated musicians in the UK Top 40, highlighting a magazine study which revealed that 80% of artists in the charts in 1990 were state educated, as compared to the charts in 2010 which were dominated by those who had been privately educated.
He said – via The Guardian: "A decent education in the arts will only be available to those able to pay for it."
Happy Mondays have announced two back to back shows in London in December.
The reformed line-up will perform a double header at the Camden Roundhouse on December 19 and 20. Support will come from 808 State.
Earlier this year, the Mondays confirmed that they are working on a new album, which will be the first time all the original line-up have recorded a record of new material since 1992's Yes Please!.
Paul McCartney, and his wife Nancy Shevall, were within two feet from crashing in a chartered helicopter, it has been revealed.
The Beatles man and his wife were traveling in a £5million, 9-seater Air Harrods helicopter in May when their pilot became "disorientated" in poor weather conditions and dropped the aircraft towards trees situated within their East Sussex estate.
A selection of John Lennon's personal correspondence is soon to be released as a digital App.
68 letters have been chosen by Hunter Davies, editor of The John Lennon Letters, for inclusion, along with another 10 letters that will be exclusive to the App. Davies will commentary and context by Hunter Davies, audio transcriptions by Christopher Eccleston as John Lennon and a foreword by Yoko Ono.
The app is currently exclusive to iOS, although it may eventually appear on other platforms.
Paul Weller will release a new EP, titled ‘Dragonfly’, next month.
The six-track collection, which is set for release on December 17, will feature songs taken from the recording sessions of his latest studio album Sonik Kicks. You can see the video for the title track by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.
The tracklisting for Dragonfly is as follows:
'Dragonfly'
'Lay Down Your Weary Burden'
'Portal To The Past'
'Devotion'
'We Got A Lot'
'The Piper'
Ben Affleck. Who'd have thought..? I remember going to a sparsely attended screening of Jersey Girl, Kevin Smith's laugh-free 2004 romcom with Affleck cast alongside his then girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, and wondering what had happened to derail such a promising career.
Kraftwerk have announced a residency in Düsseldorf this coming January.
After their residency at New York's Museum of Modern Art in April, where the group played one album per date along with additional works from their back catalogue, the band will follow a similar programme in their hometown.
The performances, called 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, will take place at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Museum, first from January 11 - 13, then 16-20. Like the MoMA shows, Kraftwerk will play one album per date and will be accompanied by 3-D visuals.
